More apple farms
Wallkill View Farm on the Route 299 flats headed up to the Gunks was started by Peter and Carol Ferrante in 1960. It offers u-pick pumpkins, sweet corn by the bushel, vegetables, hayrides on weekends, a bakery, flowers of every variety in greenhouses, garden supplies, a hay tunnel and Halloween haunted house for the kids, a Peter Pumpkin balloon jump, Thanksgiving centerpieces and Christmas trees and wreaths. It’s like a one-stop farm. Call 255-8050.
Like Wallkill View, Jenkins-Luekens Orchards , where Route 299 intersects with Yankee Folly Road — is 50 years old and offers lots besides apples: pumpkins, honey, maple syrup, jams and jellies, cider, gourds, mums and now for the first year a corn maze. Call 255-0999.
Dubois Farms, established by David Dubois in 2000 from an abandoned orchard on Perkinsville Road in Milton (off 9W south), is hosting several festivals this fall as well as the usual pick-your-own apples, pears and pumpkins. A harvest festival is on October 6 to 8, a scarecrow jamboree on October 13 and 14, a pumpkin festival on October 20 and 21, and finally the Halloween fun fest on October 27 and 28. These events will feature tractor pulls, haywagon rides, farm animals (pygmy goats and peacocks), games for the kids, and a special destination for the kids, Tiny Town. Every Saturday and Sunday there’s a barbecue in the farm’s picnic grove. Oh, Pokey the Pony is available to ride as well. Call 795-4037.
Prospect Hill Orchards at Clark’s Lane in Milton (again off Route 9W south), which has been in the Clark family for nearly 200 years, is having a special Johnny Appleseed festival this year on October 13 and 14, commemorating the peripatetic apple sower and including a how-to in cider-pressing, pumpkin painting for the kids, decorating the orchard with homemade scarecrows, and the making of old-time corn-husk dolls. Call 795-2383.
